A somewhat prolonged tour in the Holy Land followed, their Royal Highnesses visiting those sacred scenes which their father had visited before they were born. The Princes left Beirut for Athens on 7th May, and there they had the pleasure of meeting their uncle, the King of the Hellenes, and thence they went to Suda Bay to take part in a naval regatta, in which the _Bacchante’s_ boats covered themselves with glory. By way of Sicily and Sardinia, the Princes passed on to Gibraltar, there renewing their old acquaintance with the famous Lord Napier of Magdala. It is a pathetic circumstance that both Lord Napier and, but two years afterwards, the Duke of Clarence and Avondale, were borne to the grave on the same gun-carriage. At length the long voyage came to an end. Off Swanage the _Osborne_, with King Edward, Queen Alexandra, and the three young Princesses, met the _Bacchante_ early in August. A visit to Queen Victoria at Osborne followed, and the two Princes were shortly afterwards confirmed in Whippingham Church by Archbishop Tait, who said to them in his address:-- “From this time forward your course of life, which has been hitherto unusually alike, must, in many respects, diverge. You will have different occupations and different training for an expected difference of position.” [Illustration: QUEEN ALEXANDRA _From a Photograph by Gunn and Stuart_] The Archbishop was a true prophet. It was indeed necessary now to separate the brothers. Prince George, as the younger son, might be left to continue his career in the noble service to which he had become devoted, but his elder brother, being in the immediate succession to the Throne, must, it was felt, be associated, as his father had been before him, with other walks of national life as well. First of all, it was decided, must come some terms at Cambridge University, and to prepare Prince Albert Victor in the particular kind of knowledge required Mr. J. K. Stephen was associated with Mr. Dalton in the summer of 1883. Mr. Stephen, the son of one of the greatest Judges who ever adorned the English Bench--Sir James Fitz-James Stephen--was not merely a most lovable man, possessed of extraordinary intellectual powers, but his total personality was of so rare a kind as to be indescribable to those who never came under its conquering influence. Probably from no human being were all things mean and paltry so utterly alien. Large in heart and mind as he was large in bodily frame, he left, when an untimely death snatched him away, not only a bitter personal grief among his friends, but a conviction that the nation’s loss was even greater than theirs. Prince Albert Victor became warmly attached to Mr. Stephen, who gives in some private letters, quoted in Mr. J. E. Vincent’s memoir of the Duke of Clarence and Avondale, a characteristic picture of the life led by the Royal pupil and his tutors in a little house in the park at Sandringham.